OK, everybody, wave at Saturn!

By Todd Leopold, CNN

Updated 11:12 AM ET, Fri July 19, 2013

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Photos:Images of Saturn from Cassini

Saturn in a different light – NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft -- in service since 1997 and in orbit around the ringed giant since 2004 -- took pictures of Saturn and its rings during a solar eclipse on July 19. It acquired a panoramic mosaic of the Saturn system that allows scientists to see details in the rings and throughout the system as they are backlit by the sun. This mosaic marks the third time Earth has been imaged from the outer solar system. It is the second time it has been imaged by Cassini from Saturn's orbit. This annotated image shows Earth as a tiny dot.

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Photos:Images of Saturn from Cassini

Saturn in a different light – Cassini does not attempt many images of Earth because the sun is so close to the planet that an unobstructed view would damage the spacecraft's sensitive detectors. Cassini team members looked for an opportunity when the sun would slip behind Saturn from Cassini's point of view.

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Photos:Images of Saturn from Cassini

Saturn in a different light – The mosaic is part of Cassini's "Wave at Saturn" campaign, where on July 19, people for the first time had advance notice that a spacecraft was taking their picture from planetary distances. NASA invited the public to celebrate by finding Saturn in their part of the sky, waving at the ringed planet and sharing pictures over the Internet.

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Photos:Images of Saturn from Cassini

Saturn in a different light – NASA's Cassini spacecraft has taken pictures of Saturn and Earth before. In this 2006 image, Earth is a tiny dot on the left, just to the inside of the second outer ring.

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Photos:Images of Saturn from Cassini

Saturn in a different light – Saturn's dramatic rings are among the most stunning sights in the solar system, but NASA says the planet is still a mystery. The Cassini mission was launched to Saturn in October 1997 along with the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. The probe landed on Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005. Cassini's primary mission ended in June 2008, but the spacecraft stayed healthy and is still at work.

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Photos:Images of Saturn from Cassini

Saturn's rings in a different light – This view of Saturn's rings in ultraviolet light indicates ice toward the outer part of the rings.

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Photos:Images of Saturn from Cassini

Saturn in a different light – This mosaic of Saturn's rings was taken by Cassini in September 2006, while the spacecraft was in the shadow of the planet looking back toward the rings from a distance of 1.34 million miles (2.16 million kilometers).

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Photos:Images of Saturn from Cassini

Saturn in a different light – Cassini snapped this picture of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, passing in front of the planet.

And even if there were, they couldn't see us. Not in much detail, anyway. We're more than a billion kilometers away.

But we're going to wave and smile at them anyway. At least, that's the plan hatched by NASA and "The Day the Earth Smiled," organized by Cassini Imaging Team Leader Carolyn Porco.

On Friday, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft -- serving humanity since 1997 and in orbit around the ringed giant since 2004 -- will take pictures of Saturn and its rings during a solar eclipse. Included in the images, though just the barest dot, will be our Big Blue Marble.

Porco has high hopes for the extraterrestrial picture-taking, which will occur from 21:27 to 21:42 UTC. (That's 5:27 p.m. to 5:42 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time in the United States, subtracting an hour for each time zone to the west.)

"I hope, at the appropriate time, that you stop what you're doing, go outside, gather together with friends and family ... and marvel at your own existence and that of all life on planet Earth," she writes on her website. "Then, by all means, rejoice!"

Well, NASA points out, it's not like Earth is often photographed from the far reaches of outer space. "Opportunities to image Earth from the outer solar system are rare," the agency says in its "Photobomb" press release. "Since the Space Age began, there have been only two images of Earth from the outer solar system."

The space agency is going to snap images from the other side of the solar system as well. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft is in orbit around Mercury, and staffers "realized Earth is coincidentally expected to appear in some images taken in a search for natural satellites around Mercury on July 19 and 20," NASA and JPL said in a press release.

So MESSENGER will take photos at 7:49 a.m., 8:38 a.m. and 9:41 a.m. EDT (11:49, 12:38 and 13:41 UTC) on both days, NASA and JPL said. (Yeah, the Friday opportunity is gone, but you still have Saturday for the salute to Mercury.)

The release said that NASA was inspired, in part, by the Cassini team.